No Partial Feeds, Please

As bloggers, we have lots of opportunities to increase our traffic and/or our income, but it’s important to evaluate each of these opportunities from our readers’ perspective rather than only looking at the benefits to our blogs.

A perfect example of this is the use of partial feeds.

Some bloggers publish only a small excerpt from their posts for email and RSS subscribers, and readers then have to click through to the site to read the full post.

There are benefits to doing this — most notably that your readers have to actually visit your site to read the full article. This means more traffic and can also mean more interaction since readers are more likely to comment if they’re already on your site anyway.

However, many subscribers will skip right over the content — even if they stay subscribed – rather than clicking through, unless the title or excerpt really grab their attention.

As a reader, I absolutely hate partial feeds.

I know that’s a very strong statement, but I subscribe to a lot of blogs, and I subscribe to them so that I don’t have to visit each site individually. Partial feeds completely defeats the purpose of subscribing, and I unsubscribe from any blog that offers partial feeds, even if I love their content.

Since I obviously feel passionately about this as a reader, I would never expect my readers to deal with the frustration of partial feeds either, so you’ll never see partial feeds at Life Your Way.

And in the meantime, I’m on a mission to rid the blogosphere of partial feeds.

If you use partial feed, I’d love to hear your perspective. Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? Have you ever gotten negative feedback from your readers?

And another agreement! I have unsubscribed from every partial feed blog I’ve ever found interesting. Not only do I find it irritating to have to take the extra step, I think it’s manipulative on the part of the author and I don’t appreciate it. On the other hand, I understand that auto-updates on Facebook and Twitter are by necessity truncated, and for some reason I’ve never thought through I’m not bothered by that.

I know that’s a very strong statement, but I subscribe to a lot of blogs, and I subscribe to them so that I don’t have to visit each site individually. Partial feeds completely defeats the purpose of subscribing, and I unsubscribe from any blog that offers partial feeds, even if I love their content.”

I completely agree. There is only one or two blogs (that I have a small addiction to) that I subscribe to that use partial feed and don’t always click over because it still peeves me that they use that. But otherwise I refuse subscribe to blogs that do that, I agree with MontgomeryMama on this one.

Thanks for this – I definitely agree. I subscribed to a cooking blog the other day that only gave the title and the first sentence. ONE. SENTENCE. And no pictures, which are the best part of a cooking blog. It was especially annoying since the blogger always started with a seemingly unrelated lead-in, and “creative” titles (not always the recipe name.) I emailed the blogger, and upon hearing it was on purpose and not going to change, promptly unsubscribed.

Partial feeds just aren’t worth my time. (And I do go to actual posts if I want to comment; this post is proof!)

Well, I’m a blogger using full feeds, however, it kinda hurts when people DON’T come to the site and visit or comment so I’ve thought about switching. It’s frustrating to feel like you’re talking to nobody and makes me, many times, want to quit……

Hi, I'm Mandi, and I'm so glad you're here!

A few things you should know about me: I'm a wife and mother of 6, as well as a full-time work-at-home mom, a passionate entrepreneur, a homeschooler, and an INTJ, with a heavy emphasis on the introvert! And I'm pretty sure fair-trade chocolate, loose leaf tea, and Starbucks lattes are among life's greatest pleasures.